


Smile Again

by taizi



Category: One Piece
Genre: Families of Choice, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Modern AU, Nakamaship, Will tag as we go, getting better
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2018-12-06 03:29:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11592006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: His eyes are bright, and his mouth is stretched into a grin as wide as the world, and looking at him Usopp couldcry.





	1. Chapter 1

Between a failed practice exam, a lab he wasn’t prepared for, a missed bus, and an unexpected downpour on the long walk home, Usopp is having a bad day when he lets himself in through the front door.

“I’m home,” he barely has time to say, when suddenly he has an armful of best friend and honorary brother. Luffy slams into his side with all the grace and finesse of a runaway freight train, and thanks to the previous four years of cohabitation, Usopp hardly staggers.

“Jeez, Lu, where’s the fire?” he says, but already his mood is on the upswing, and Luffy’s arms around his waist are like a balm.

“No fire,” the smaller boy says cheerfully. “But Sanji’s mad! He’s chasing me with a spatula again. Zoro’s still at work so I was going to hide with Nami, but then you got home!”

His short-sleeve flannel is a size too big and only buttoned up halfway, as per their resident med student’s strict orders. It hangs off his thin shoulders in a way that all but showcases the bright white bandages wrapping the length of his chest and stomach. His face is still pale, and there are still dark circles like bruises under his eyes – but his eyes are  _bright,_ and his mouth is stretched into a grin as wide as the world, and looking at him Usopp could  _cry._

The accident was almost three months past now, but it will always feel like barely a moment ago. Franky used his badge to procure photos of the wreckage, the twisted metal that was once Ace’s motorcycle, hit broadside by a truck that ran a red light. He still has the photos, tucked far away from eternally curious brown eyes, and Usopp has found Zoro shifting through them with dark eyes more than once.

Usopp can’t stand to see them, but he understands.

There was a time when it seemed as though Luffy would never smile again, days when his endless grief alternated between manifesting as cold anger or wretched heartache, and every night ended in tears. There were mornings when he simply didn’t get out of bed, and weeks when he didn’t sleep at all for days at a time.  

But now, in this moment, he’s happy in the circle of Usopp’s arms – beaming at him in a way that fills every inch of Usopp’s chest with warmth, that world-bending hurt hardly more than a fading footprint in the farthest corners of his healing face.

“Oh, wow,” Luffy pipes up suddenly, leaning away. “You’re all wet! What were you doing out in the rain? Chopper’s gonna have a fit when he sees you, haha – “

Sanji chooses that moment to slam through the doorway, so abruptly that Luffy cuts himself off with a yelp.

“There you are, you little brat! You’re supposed to be helping me peel potatoes, and instead I catch you sneaking dessert!”

“It wasn’t me!”

“I  _saw_ you!”

Sanji isn’t mad. Living together this long has taught Usopp how to read his friends with a slim margin of error, and behind Sanji’s dark scowl and loud bluster is the same delight that Usopp himself feels on a daily – delight that he  _can_ scowl and bluster again, without worrying that a playfully sharp word will land too heavily, or cut where it was supposed to tease. 

Luffy is giggling behind his hands, and Usopp is taken suddenly by the urge to play along. He drops his bag, and grabs Luffy’s better hand, and takes off down the hall – leaving a wet trail on the floor and Sanji cussing up a storm in the foyer. Luffy’s giggles turn into gleeful peals of laughter that echo into the farthest corners of their house, and his fingers wrap around Usopp’s that much tighter.

Usopp was unhappy before he got home, but he doesn’t remember why. There’s no room for anything but joy here – bold-faced, defiant, impossible joy.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s been a slow shift at the Baratie, and at two a.m. Sanji is one of the handful of kitchen staff left for the night. He’s covering for the pâtissier during her maternity leave on top of his regular duties. It means longer hours for Sanji, but the head chef doesn’t mind having him around after his scheduled shift ends. **  
**

Nami assured him it was fine. Brook works at home between gigs, and Chopper’s classes won’t start for another two weeks. Zoro has been taking time off. There’s always someone home.

Still, a pit sits in his stomach when he’s not there to make dinner.

He scowls down at the half-empty pastry kitchen inventory, willing it to finish itself. It’s almost a relief when the server leans over the expo counter and calls back to him.

“Sanji? One of your brothers is here to see you.”

Four years ago, a statement like that would have filled him with dread.

Tonight, he doesn’t hesitate to abandon his station and head for the swinging kitchen door, pushing it open and scanning the warmly lit dining room for a familiar face.

And right away he finds Luffy, sitting by himself at one of the small, two-seat tables beside the wide front window. He hasn’t seen Sanji; his head is turned to face the street, neon city lights washing over his skin and hair and hands. Sanji backtracks to the kitchen with his heart in his throat.

It’s the work of about three minutes, putting together a quick serving tray. A mug of heated milk, cocoa, sugar, salt and cinnamon stirred in by eye, a generous slice of the mousse cake Sanji made earlier this morning, a fork and a cloth napkin. A quick text to Nami, to let her know their wayward Luffy’s whereabouts. And then Sanji is out the door again.

The bartender catches his eye and he nods to her, a silent thank you for sending the less busy server to find him.

Luffy looks up when he draws near and smiles with a happy “Hi, Sanji!”

“Hi, yourself,” Sanji replies, without moving yet to join him. “You know I’m gonna ask.”

“Uh-huh.” Luffy’s smile dims a little. “Sorry it’s so late.”

Not for the first time in his life, and certainly not for the last, Sanji is torn between the polar opposite desires of either hugging the brown-eyed menace or shaking him senseless. Tray balanced in one hand, Sanji rubs his eyes with the other.

He doesn’t care how late it is. Once upon a time Luffy slept and rose with the sun, but his sleeping pattern has been been skewed beyond repair lately, and it’s no wonder why.

The edges of an ugly scar peek out from under the low collar of his shirt, a reminder, just in case Sanji managed to forget.

Sanji sets the tray down gently, and takes a seat in the only other chair. “Don’t be,” he says mildly, taking the safer route. “You saved me from a bunch of paperwork. I was going crazy back there.”

Luffy’s grin blooms right back, and only widens when Sanji slides the mug and mousse cake in front of him. He makes a delighted noise that sounds more like a verbal exclamation point than anything else and tucks right in.

“You made this, didn’t you? I can tell,” Luffy says, mouth full. “It’s amazing!”

It’s been years now, and words like that  _still_ fill Sanji with an impossible warmth. It probably always will. He only has to think of growing up in his father’s house, the scorn and mockery his every attempt in the kitchen was subject to, and Sanji knows he won’t ever take his friends’ praise for granted, even if it makes him feel too much like the earnest child he used to be.

He itches for a cigarette. He settles for a bite of Luffy’s cake.

On nights like this it’s wrong to pry. They’ve learned patience, learned the ins and outs of this grief, even half a year later, when it leads Luffy to do reckless, unpredictable things – like wander into the dark of early morning by himself, when he  _should_ have been safely asleep in the comfortable dog-pile of Surume and Sunny and Laboon.

So Sanji waits, leaning back in his chair. The nutty taste of rich chocolate lingering in his mouth, the sound of conversation at the bar a low hum on the other side of the room, the server unobtrusively stacking chairs on cleaned tables to sweep the floor, and Luffy, who doesn’t look at him when he finally speaks.

“I had a dream,” he tells Sanji, “about the pirates.”

That’s not what he expected. He sits forward, blinking past his surprise.

Luffy has had these pirate dreams for as long as Sanji has known him. Nami keeps threatening to write them into an epic tale, and Sanji will be the first to read it if she ever does. Tales of daring and foolishness and heartache. Luffy used to regale them with stories almost every morning at the breakfast table, waving his fork grandly and filling the room with a particular type of sunshine only those close to him will ever know.

He hasn’t lately told them any of his pirate stories lately, and Sanji thinks he knows why. The dream he had after Usopp’s dog Merry died, of a viking funeral for the funny little ramhead ship of his dreams, brought even stalwart Robin to tears.

With an icy apprehension, Sanji wonders what Luffy’s dreams have been about since his brother died. He’s not sure he’s prepared to hear it.

“You were getting married!” Luffy says a moment later, and Sanji is once again thrown for a loop.

“Married?” he says dumbly. The server, passing by with a broom, bites down on the edges of her smile. “To who?”

“Pudding,” comes the prompt reply. “She wasn’t a good person, but your dad wanted to be friends with her mom, so he was making you marry her.”

“That sounds like him.”

“He’s not a good person, either,” Luffy says frankly, meeting Sanji’s eyes squarely – very pointedly talking about his real father in the real world now, and Sanji can only soften and nod, helpless, as always, in face of this boy’s fiercely protective nature.

“He’s really not.”

Luffy nods, and looks back down at his cake. It’s only half-finished at this point, and Sanji feels a spike of alarm.

“He was making you get married, and the rest of us – we didn’t know why you were leaving, you wouldn’t say. I think you were trying to protect us, because you said a lot of awful stuff to make us leave you alone. I tried to make you stay, but I couldn’t.” He drags his fork through the raspberry sauce, metal tines scratching faintly against the porcelaine. “And then you left.”

And then Luffy woke up, and left the house without pausing even just to put on a jacket, and took a fifteen minute bus ride in the dead of night to where he knew Sanji was, and for a moment Sanji can’t breathe through this borrowed hurt.

He reaches out, dropping a hand on unruly black hair, and ruffles through it with his fingers until Luffy looks up at him.

“You woke up before the end,” Sanji says with a lightness he doesn’t feel. Some of the sad uncertainty in those round brown eyes across from him edges out to make way for a curiosity that sits much more at home there.

“The end?”

“Mmhm. I don’t know this Captain Luffy as well as you do, but I’m pretty sure an argument or a fight wouldn’t be enough to keep him from saving one of his nakama.”

“Saving?” Luffy perks up a little bit. “Do you think you were in some kind of danger?”

“I must have been,” Sanji says, as reasonably as if it’s real life they’re discussing, and not some survivor’s guilt-warped fantasy. “You said yourself, Sanji didn’t want to go. You could tell, right? So there must have been a really good reason for him to have gone anyway.”

There’s a shine in Luffy’s eyes that wasn’t there when he said hello, and he balls his hands into fists, leaning on them to lean over the table and exclaim, “You’re right! I’ll go back to sleep when I get home and save you!”

Sanji can’t help smiling, but anything he might have said was cut off by the heavy fist landing on the crown of his head.

“I pay you to  _work_ ,” Zeff says gruffly, and Sanji rubs the sore spot on his head as he turns to face the older blond.

“I’m off the clock, geezer,” Sanji gripes back, “and I have company, show a little class.”

Zeff eyes Luffy without comment, taking in, Sanji is sure, the shadows under his eyes and the thinness of his face. Thankfully Zeff is capable of something like subtlety, because all he says is, “Have this brat of mine bring you lot in for dinner sometime, Luffy, on the house. I’ve got a few new dishes I wanna pilot with a good group of taste-testers. Drinks and desserts, too.”

Luffy brightens at the idea, thrumming with enthusiasm, and Sanji can  _almost_ bring himself to regret the chocolate and sugar he just loaded him with.

“Sure! But Zoro is doing a really good job at his meetings, so make sure not to offer him any alcohol, okay? Not even his favorite.”

“‘Course not, kid. Sanji, head home for the night. I can finish up.”

Sanji dips his head in a nod, grateful for the excuse not to send Luffy home by himself. It would have been transparent to anyone but Luffy, who just says, “That’s nice of him! Thanks, old man!”

It’s cold outside, their breath misting as Sanji hails a cab. He piles into the backseat with Luffy, who leans up on the middle console to make conversation with the driver, and Sanji hides a smile behind a cigarette as the driver warms to Luffy completely in the short time he knows him.

Nami is awake when they come in, sleepless and short-tempered with worry. Luffy sinks onto the couch during her scoldings, nodding solemnly as he gathers Surume into his lap and lets his head sink over onto Usopp’s shoulder, and Nami gives up within a few moments. Throwing her hands up, exasperated, and then grabbing the throw blanket off the back of the armchair and covering her little brothers with it, temper notwithstanding.

Sanji brushes a hand through Luffy’s hair, then Usopp’s in the name of fairness, and says goodnight to the room at large. He’s been on his feet for fourteen hours and he’s in desperate need of a shower and his bed.

Before he can make it down the hall, Luffy’s voice drifts out to him. He stops where he is and turns, all the time in the world for the brown eyes reaching for his across the short space between them.

“I’ll finish dreaming it, Sanji,” Luffy says with certainty. “And I’ll bring you home for sure.”

“I know you will,” Sanji tells him, heart full of something he can’t rightly name.


	3. Chapter 3

Chopper graduated high school when he was fourteen, and he’s small for his age on top of that; almost nineteen and at the end of this first year of medical school, the rest of his classmates are head and shoulders above him, and sometimes look down on him in more ways than just the obvious. 

He doesn’t have to worry about that kind of thing from his family.

On the phone, sounding as though she was chiseled from marble, Robin asks if he understood what she said, and he says yes. She tells him to text Zoro where he is and then stay put, and he says okay. Her voice only gets soft for him, the way it does when she tells him stories on rainy stay-at-home days, as she says goodbye.

Chopper texts Zoro. His hands are shaking as he puts his phone down – screen-side up, ringer on loud, just in case he somehow misses another call. Then he sits quietly back in his chair, draws his legs up to his chest, wraps both arms around his knees, and does his very best to hug himself together.

Robin said Luffy and Ace were in an accident, but that doesn’t make sense. Ace is always careful, always so careful. Not with a lot of things – not with his own safety and good health – but he looks after Luffy. Ace wouldn’t have let an accident happen, not to Luffy.

They’re both okay – they’re both so well taken care of, they’re both so loved, it wouldn’t make sense for them to be anything but okay.

Hejust saw Luffy a handful of hours ago. Silly Luffy, with his messy hair and well-worn Soul King shirt, Ace’s arm draped around his shoulders and two strawberry crepes from breakfast in his hand, on his way out the door into the fresh pink morning, laughing as he goes.

Ace travels for work and it’s always so special when he’s home. Luffy’s been excited for weeks. Chopper’s eyes are burning and his chest feels too tight, rib cage closing like a claw around his lungs and heart until he’s almost hyperventilating.

He  _just saw_  Luffy, and it feels impossible for this to be real, but he knows better. He’s a student of medicine, the child of two doctors. The suspension of belief doesn’t last. 

A car accident, and Chopper’s mind knows right where to go. Pulling the numbers, the ugly statistics, the risk of fatality, the injuries sustained by motorcyclists. Calling to mind in vivid, crystal-clear detail an image from one of his textbooks of soft tissue damage, a driver whose body was dragged across the asphalt after his accident, and Chopper starts to cry.

Almost nineteen but he feels half that age, alone and impossibly scared and sobbing into the tops of his knees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :')


	4. Chapter 4

Luffy is fast asleep on the couch, dwarfed by the overstuffed cushions and throw pillows. Surume is tucked into a comfortable loaf on his stomach, knowing, somehow, not to lay across the still-healing ruin of Luffy’s chest. Surume’s rumbling, throaty purr seems to fill the quiet room. 

“Good kitty,” Chopper whispers, with an approving pet between the orange tabby’s ears. “Help him get better.” 

Something painful inside her wraps unforgiving fingers around Nami’s heart and squeezes. Blinking through a burn in her eyes, she leans against the armrest and says, “Chopper, why don’t you go help Sanji in the kitchen? Luffy’s medicine makes him hungry, let’s be ready for him when he wakes up.”

“’kay,” he says, climbing to his feet, and laughs a little when Zoro ruffles his hair on his way past. 

Zoro claims a seat in the armchair with a nod to Nami as he goes, club soda in hand where there once would have been a tumbler, three fingers of whisky, neat. It’s been hard on him, they all know it’s been hard, but he’s been sober since the day they got that world-bending call from the hospital and he’s never talked about it.

Sanji doesn’t cook with alcohol anymore. He uses stock to deglaze, uses juices in his desserts, threw out even the expensive foreign wines he kept squirreled away in the topmost cabinets. He’s never talked about it either. 

“Brook will be home tonight?” Zoro says, voice low. 

“Franky’s on his way to the airport now. Should be back in time for dinner.” Nami brushes a hand across her eyes impatiently, and sinks down to sit on the edge of the sofa instead. The cushion sinks a bit with her weight but Luffy doesn’t stir, dark eyelashes still against a smooth brown cheek. She puts a hand in his wild hair, combs through it gently a few times, and says, “I’m glad he cut his tour short. I know it’s – I know I shouldn’t be, I know his fans are – “

“They get it,” Zoro cuts in, not unkindly. “Usopp told me. His PR team made a statement, and his fans have been supportive. Looks like Brook’s music attracts a good crowd.” 

Nami nods. Usopp told her, too. But there’s a heavy ache inside her, something too big for words, and she’s helplessly trying to communicate it anyway. “I’m just – relieved we’ll all be home,” she tries again. “We’ll all be here for him if he needs us. I couldn’t – I mean, I don’t think I’d – “ 

 _I don’t think I’d be enough on my own,_ she can’t bring herself to say.  _I don’t think I could help him if it was just me._

They work better as a team; they always have. Ever since they fell into each other’s lives all those years ago, scrawny, scrappy teenagers with the weight of the world on their backs and chips the size of ships on their shoulders, they’ve learned to navigate this world in new and better ways. It’s easier together. It’s better. 

Nami doesn’t know how to do it by herself anymore. She wants to be what Luffy needs, but she’s terrified of being handed this torch and failing him. Of trying to help and somehow hurting instead. 

Robin and Usopp will be home soon. They’re at the university, barely ten minutes away. Sanji’s smooth jazz is soothing, an undercurrent for his and Chopper’s easy back-and-forth, words indistinguishable from this far away but still a comfort. Franky will be back with Brook in a handful of hours, Zoro’s bright green eyes are sharp but not harsh, and Luffy is breathing slowly under her hand. 

“You could,” Zoro says, no hesitation, not the slightest measure of doubt. “If you had to, you could. And not just for him, for any of us.” He takes a drink of his soda, doesn’t wrinkle his nose in distaste the way Nami knows he wants to, and adds, “But you don’t have to. You’re not alone. When you get tired, just let me know. I’ll be here.” 

Nami leans toward the belief in his voice like a flower unfolding in the sun. Needing to hear him say it, as childish as it makes her feel, because Zoro’s faith has never gone unrewarded, Zoro’s faith only belongs to steadfast things, and if he believes it, it  _must_ be true. 

“And Luffy – he’ll – “

“He’ll be fine.” Zoro looks at the boy, his best friend and his brother and every wonderful and annoying and impossible thing in between, and says, “He’s not alone, either.” 

Nami nods, and a few tears manage to slip free. It’s easier to breathe as she wipes them away with a sleeve, and she manages a slightly choked chuckle at the look of mild panic that dashes across Zoro’s face. It’s the same way he always looks when one of his friends cries, a touch of normalcy that completes the picture. Somehow it makes her feel loved. 

She settles in on the couch, one hand still smoothing through Luffy’s hair, and listens to her brothers in the kitchen, Luffy’s cat purring by her knee, the sound of a car in the driveway. 

In the precious few moments that still belong to her and Zoro, Nami says, “Hey.” 

He looks at her, this scarred young man with ghosts of his own, whose hands shake when the withdrawals are at their worst, who has let Luffy fall asleep in his arms every night since he’s been home from the hospital, who has never once said a word about any of it. Younger than Robin and Brook and Franky and Sanji but still, somehow, the support of this family Luffy made. The foundation they built their home on. 

“I just want to let you know that I love you,” she says. “A lot. Never forget that.” 

Not the first time she’s said it by far, and it won’t be the last, and it’s nothing that will surprise Zoro to hear. It does coax a smile out of him though, one he hides behind the rim of his glass, and all at once he’s that softer version of himself, the one that comes out when Chopper climbs on his back or Usopp drags him outside to see his latest creation or Robin smooths a fond hand through his vivid hair. 

And now it’s here for her. 

Just that is enough to lift the last of those heavy fingers off Nami’s heart, at least for the evening – enough that she can look up with a smile when her friends come through the front door, and welcome them home with a warmth she finally has enough of to share. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for posting two chapters at once !


	5. Chapter 5

Luffy wakes up suddenly, violently, voice caught in his throat and eyes wide. He startles Zoro awake, too, and Robin almost doesn’t move fast enough to still him before he hurts himself.

“Hush now,” she says, easing Luffy upright with infinite care. He’s breathing, too fast and too shallow, his heart racing like a bird’s beneath her hands. “It was a dream, Luffy, it wasn’t real. You’re safe.”

Luffy’s eyes latch onto her face the way a drowning man might latch onto a life preserver. Robin’s heart breaks but she smiles through it, and breathes slowly so that he can follow her example.

Zoro is already leaning over to turn the lamp on, green eyes vivid and hard to meet. “Stitches,” he murmurs, and Robin’s eyes drop to the ruin of Luffy’s chest. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s torn them open after a vicious nightmare, but the the healing wound doesn’t appear to be bleeding through its new bandages.

It takes Luffy long minutes to reorient himself – clinging to Robin’s arm with a grip that hurts, eyes darting through the half-lit room like monsters might linger in the corners – but finally he does.

“Oh,” he says hoarsely. “I dreamed there was – that Ace was – “

Robin’s heart turns to ice, at the same time Zoro sucks in a sharp breath. Luffy lifts a hand, like he might try to touch the wealth of gauze over his chest. Zoro catches it before he can, tangling their fingers together in that easy way best friends do, but the damage is done.

“It’s still here,” Luffy says. His voice limps and breaks. “It’s real, and that… that means… Ace is – ”

With the dream-fear gone, grief wells up in its place like a reliable friend. His tears are silent when they come, but only because he’s without the energy to cry out anymore.

His shoulders shake as he clutches Zoro’s hand and weeps quietly, and it’s always these moments in the dark of early morning that are the most cruel. When he wakes up and, for just a brief, shining moment, he forgets.

Robin doesn’t waste time abandoning her armchair to sit on the edge of the bed and hug the boy properly. Zoro doesn’t let go of Luffy’s hand, and she knows she’d have better luck asking a mountain to bow than she would asking him to loose his grip. Luffy cries until his body’s exhaustion and the medication catch up again, and then he slips away under waves of sleep right there against Robin’s chest.

He’ll wake up in a few hours and they’ll go through the whole painful ordeal once more. It’s one of many reasons why he’s not ever left alone.

But Robin thinks she might save them all some time, this time. If Luffy is already in her arms when a nightmare sends him running back, it will be that much easier to soothe him.

It’s a good excuse, she thinks, to not let him go.


End file.
